The Significance of the Desire for Knowledge

In doing some research on Nietzsche, I came across the following from Patrick Downey's Desperately Wicked: Philosophy, Christianity, and the Human Heart (p. 78):

The desire to know, with its respective fear of ignorance and deceit, should rule over all other desires and fears. In all other desires fear inevitably begins to predominate, thereby guaranteeing the eclipse of the original desire. The erotic desire to have leads to the fear of loss. The thumotic desire for justice leads to the fear of suffering injustice without getting revenge. Only in the desire of logos, where the fear of ignorance merely restates the desire to know, are our fears and desires in complete harmony. The only way to be finally ruled by desire is to be ruled by the desire to know. Deceit and lies, wherein the fear of loss or dishonor trumps the desire to know, display the essential disorder of the soul wherein these two fears end up dominating the desire to own or be honored.

Whether or not the human soul is in fact structured this way, the logical relationship among the parts in this Socratic understanding that is explained here is interesting, and has a ring of truth to it.

Ethics, Textbooks, and Money

I recall a few years ago there was a bit of a controversy in the philosophy blogosphere and on our own campus about the ethics of faculty selling textbooks to bookbuyers. I agree that there is something unethical about requesting an examination copy from a publisher, then selling it for personal gain. However, it's not as clear to me that there is something wrong with the following scenario, and I'd be interested to hear what readers of this blog have to say:

A professor receives a complementary textbook from a publisher. She neither requested it, nor has any use for it. A book buyer comes through offering $20 for the book. It will either sit on the professor's shelf, or be recycled. Is there something wrong with selling the book?

What do you think?

EKU Focus on Scholarship

The EKU Libraries have started a new program to inform the campus and beyond about the scholarly activities of faculty and other members of the EKU community. This is a series of webcasts in which these activities are discussed. The first one should be familiar to readers of this blog.

Review of "Is Goodness without God Good Enough?"

A couple of friends of mine from graduate school, Nate King and Robert Garcia, edited this book, published in 2009 by Rowman and Littlefield.

After the introduction, the book includes a revised version of a debate between Christian theist philosopher William Lane Craig and secular humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz. Kurtz and Craig interpret the question in different ways. This would be a problem for the book, but it is not because the ensuing discussion of the relevant issues (by Craig, Kurtz, Louise Antony, John Hare, Donald C. Hubin, C. Stephen Layman, Mark C. Murphy, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and Richard Swinburne) is able to cover more philosophical territory. Kurtz interprets the question as focusing on whether or not a person can be moral without belief in God. He argues that such belief is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal morality. Craig agrees with this. However, he interprets the question in a different manner. The issue for Craig is the ontological foundation for morality, and he argues that theism soundly provides such a foundation, whereas atheism does not.

The commentary on the debate from various theistic and atheistic philosophers is provocative and insightful. The concluding responses from Craig and Kurtz, which did not appear in the original debate, are also helpful. My take on the book is similar to a point made by Craig in response to Sinnott-Armstrong's chapter. The latter argues that a morality based on harm-avoidance is a modest but still sound morality. We can know that harm is wrong without God, and we can avoid harming others in unjust ways without God as well. The bone of contention, so to speak, is whether or not this is a suitable terminus, or stopping point, of explanation. For Craig, it is not. Why is it wrong to harm others, especially if in so doing I can get what I want? And if naturalism is true, and we are the by-products of blind natural processes, why care about harming others? For the theist, such an attidude is justified because other human beings have inherent value and dignity as made in the image of God.

In closing, I really enjoyed this book and found it to provide important challenges for people on both sides of the debate. I would have preferred that the original debate focus on the same conception of the question, "Is goodness without God good enough?" However, with the additional contributions made by the original participants and the other commenters, in the end a we are left with a substantive and insightful work on this metaphysically and existentially important issue.

Sandel, Kant, and Joe

Joe Posnanski, that is. He's a columnist for the Kansas City Star and now a Sports Illustrated contributor. He discusses Michael Sandel's new book and some Kant as well at this post on his blog. Joe was kind enough to write the foreword for Football and Philosophy: Going Deep. And he's one of my favorite sportswriters.

Sports, Sex, and Philosophy

Contrary to what James Stacey Taylor says over at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, in his review of Todd May's new book Death (Acumen), a significant portion of the popular philosophy out today is about the love of wisdom, and not the love of money:

Todd May's Death is the twelfth volume in Acumen's The Art of Living series, which aims to bring philosophy to a wider audience by having philosophers draw on their personal reflections to stimulate their readers' thoughts about life. Alas, given the current lamentable state of popular philosophy (which often seems to be more concerned with the love of money than the love of wisdom) Acumen's entry into this area might not be greeted with widespread delight. This reception is unlikely to improve on first encountering the titles of some of the volumes that have already been published in this series, which include those addressing such pressing philosophical issues as Pets, Clothes, Fame, Sex, and Sport.

First, as someone who has been involved in several popular philosophy titles as an editor and contributor, I'm pretty tired of the attitude many in the profession have towards this stuff. While I agree that some of it is pretty bad, much of it is very good given the aims and scope of these works. And of course the same thing can be said about the high-level work done in philosophy these days, i.e. some of it is very bad, and some of it is very good. I haven't made that much money from my popular philosophy books, and can honestly say that I would do this sort of thing apart from the royalties. So much of contemporary philosophy is inaccessible to non-philosophers due in part to the specialization now present in the field. The average educated person does not realize that philosophy is both present in and relevant to her everyday life. We philosophers complain about the lack of critical thinking and philosophical thought present in society, but do relatively little about it.

By writing about the ways that philosophy is connected to daily life, a true love of wisdom can be displayed. This has been an aim of mine with respect to my involvement in popular philosophy, and I've received very kind emails from readers who've enjoyed the essays in Running and Philosophy and Football and Philosophy and found them to be meaningful for their lives as well. If wisdom is taking insights and arguments about the big questions in life and then applying the results in practical ways for the sake of virtue and human flourishing, then I would argue that some of the popular philosophy displays a love of wisdom in ways that much of the current scholarship does not. We need both sorts of philosophy, in my estimation.

I'm also quite surprised that someone would think that sex and sport are not philosophically pressing issues. It isn't clear that James Stacey Taylor thinks this, but it is clear that he believes many philosophers will. There are philosophers doing excellent work on topics in philosophy of sex and love and philosophy of sport. For those philosophers who dismiss these topics without much if any familiarity with the actual work that is being done, I would urge them to exhibit rationality and the principle of charity and to actually read some philosophical work in a particular field before dismissing the work done in that field.

I'll close with an appeal to authority related to the philosophical import of sport (at least one sport, anyway): John Rawls took baseball to be a higher pleasure, in Mill's sense of the term.

Some related links:
John Rawls on baseball
Popular Philosophy in the Classroom

Books I'm Currently Reading (or soon will be)

I'm still in the process of reading several works in preparation for my NEH course on God and the good life. I'll post reviews of at least some of them as I make more progress.

Here's the current list:

On the Genealogy of Morality, Friedrich Nietzsche
Is Goodness without God Good Enough? Garcia and King
Can We be Good Without God? Robert Buckman
The Believing Primate, Schloss and Murray
Atheism, Morality, and Meaning, Michael Martin
Aquinas's Ethics, DeYoung, McCluskey, and Van Dyke

If you've read any of these works, feel free to share your thoughts. I've got to say that in the title competition, Believing Primate wins!